warned Bloomberg that his term-limits maneuvering could jeopardize his credi- bility with Albany lawmakers at a time when he would need their support on a vital issue like renewing schools control, Bloomberg replied, "We'll make a deal with Shelly." The Mayor sometimes uses a salesman metaphor when talking about government ("You have to be able to go to the next door with a smile on your face, ring the bell, and get the first rejection out of your mind"), and his customers in the legislature appear to have taught him, at last, to barter. "The Times wrote a story, an editorial, that I should be up there screaming about the M.T.A.," Bloomberg said, referring to the state-run transit agency's latest fare-hike threats. "If I turn it into the old 'Bloomberg congestion pricing,' not a chance. You have to do it quietly. The state government said, 'No, we'll do it our- selves.' O.K. I'll be helpful, and I can work quietly behind the scenes, but you can't have it both ways." By Memorial Day, the quiet approach appeared to be paying off An M.T.A. bailout package fell short of Bloomberg's aims for substantial capital improvements, but managed to prevent the doomsday scenario he and other politicians had been warning about. Speaker Silver was draft- ing a bill that would retain most elements of mayoral school control. Bloomberg and the City Council were close to working out a budget agreement that would avoid major layoffs, thanks in large part to a pro- posed rise in the sales tax, pending Alba- ny's likely approval, that could deliver nearly a billion dollars in new revenue. And, meanwhile, the local economy was faring better than expected. Bloomberg visited Jamaica, QIeens, with the Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, to announce a new job-training plan at the end of May. "I'm reasonably optimis- tic that we've turned the corner," he said, prompting Azi Paybarah, from the Ob- server, to ask him whether, in light of the surprisingly favorable conditions, the Mayor's stated rationale for running again-to save the city from a historic cri- sis-might no longer apply. The press corps, in its churlishness, had come to view Bloomberg's state- ments about the financial crisis as his weapons of mass destruction-a mere pretext-and was determined to get him to admit in public what even his 48 THE NEW YORKER, AUGUST 24, 2009 friends acknowledge in private: that he is running again because he knows he is good at the job and because a compara- bly satisfying alternative, like heading the U.N. or the World Bank, is not available. ("No, it was not the economic crisis," Mort Zuckerman told Joyce Pur- nick. 'What else was he going to do?") Bloomberg turned on his questioner. 'Why don't you just get serious," he said. Before leaving, he looked directly at Pay- barah and muttered, "You're a disgrace," inadvertently echoing a press conference, in 2005, at which he had called the pros- pect of a City Council override of term limits "disgraceful" -and thereby delight- ing his detractors. Within hours, a video of the latest tantrum was linked to the Drudge Report. In the next few days, as the press took a Pyrrhic victory lap, the Mayor seemed to console himself with the long view that legacies are built on achievement, not temperament. And then a partisan squab- ble led to a coup in the State Senate, in early June, that seemed to render moot Bloomberg's focus on repairing his rela- tionship with Sheldon Silver and the As- sembly. For a month, the Senate Demo- crats and Republicans bickered over questions of precedent and procedure, un- able to produce a quorum, and, despite Governor Paterson's efforts to compel a resolution, the scheduled end of the legis- lative session arrived without any action taken on either the crucial sales tax or control of the schools: partisanship trump- ing progress. The citjs Board of Educa- tion, which had run the schools before Bloomberg took control, was reconsti- tuted overnight. Political ironists were pleased to note that the mastermind of the Senate coup, and, by extension, of Bloomberg's montWong headache, was another bil- lionaire with big ideas: Tom Golisano, the owner of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team and sometime Republican vanity candidate for governor. Golisano had helped finance the Democrats' successful takeover of the State Senate, last fall, hoping that this might preserve his influence. But when he visited with the new Majority Leader, the QIeens-based senator Malcolm Smith, in April, Smith kept looking distractedly at his Black- Berry. Golisano felt disrespected-Smith was guilty of insz!fJìcient genuflection- and eventually persuaded a couple of easy Democratic marks to switch parties, ap- pearing to tip the balance back in favor of the Republicans and creating the legal standoff that shuttered the legislature. Making matters more frustrating for Bloomberg, Golisano's meddling had the unintended effect of emboldening a renegade faction of Democratic senators. When the Democrats regained the upper hand, after the Fourth of July, these sen- ators seemed to revel in all the negative attention. They belatedly granted the sales tax but balked on the schools, argu- ing that parents felt alienated from the Bloomberg administration's top-down management. Their driving motivation seemed more personal than ideological, and the more the Mayor seethed, the more determined they seemed to be to flaunt their unexpected power, breaking for summer and announcing that they'd revisit the matter in September, at their convenience. Bloomberg went on the radio and cited Neville Chamberlain and the dangers of appeasement. The sena- tors, in turn, likened Bloomberg to a plantation owner. For a few weeks, the senators had their fun, but they eventually relented. No one really wanted to return to the days of de- centralization and runaway local school boards-they just wanted to see the Mayor sweat. The Albany bows, as un- likely a Greek chorus as you could imag- ine, may have unwittingly been channel- ling the larger ambivalence of the general public. According to polls, a majority of the citjs voters would prefer a new mayor but also believe the current one is the best available man for the job. O n a rainy morning in June, Bloom- berg arrived at the Dyker Beach Golf Course, in Brooldyn, wearing a hor- iwntally striped polo shirt and khakis. He helped himself to a cup of coffee and took a seat at a table with the chef Mario Batali, the former Merrill Lynch C.E.O. Stanley O'Neal, and several other men, all of whom leaned forward, elbows bent, as though ready for class. He made a joke about term limits, to knowing laughter,